In its 12 December 1908 issue, The Canadian Courier published an article about Anne of Green Gables, released six months earlier.
Contents
Preamble
An Island Idyll
Notes
Bibliography
Image Credit
Preamble
The Canadian Courier, a Toronto-based weekly magazine, published an article about Anne of Green Gables in its 12 December 1908 issue. In addition to echoing the enthusiasm that most reviewers expressed for the book (see the reviews included in volume 3 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader), this early article made two claims that would be recur in a lot of coverage that would follow. First, it made clear that the audience for Montgomery’s work consisted of both adults and young people. Second, it predicted that many readers of Montgomery’s description of the Prince Edward Island countryside would want to travel there to see it for themselves.
The article lists two publishers: L.C. Page and Company of Boston and William Briggs of Toronto. Briggs did not publish Montgomery’s books, but perhaps it distributed them in Canada.
An Island Idyll
“An Island Idyll,” The Canadian Courier (Toronto), 12 December 1908, 24. https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.8_06911_107/24.
Miss L.M. Montgomery of Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, has written a quiet but sparkling chronicle in “Anne of Green Gables,” the story of a quaint little orphan who enlivens a farm-house of Avonlea, where Matthew Cuthbert lived, with his sister, Marilla. Anne is an extremely voluble young person with a temper to correspond with her ruddy locks. But she is a lovable chatterbox with a capacity for affection which appears to be boundless. The Canadian reader is absolutely at home in Avonlea and knows all about the farm and school in which Anne found her world. The familiar is touched pleasantly with the writer’s imaginative skill and the Green Gables dooryard stands invitingly open to all who desire a rest from the day’s toil. “Anne of Green Gables” will make a delightful gift book for girls, which is not saying that it appeals exclusively to the Young Person.
Miss Montgomery has made all her readers resolved to take the first boat next spring for Prince Edward Island, such is the gentle radiance which shines upon Avonlea. One would travel far to spend an hour in such a spot as the Barry garden.
“It was encircled by huge old willows and tall firs, beneath which flourished flowers that loved the shade. Prim, right-angled paths, neatly bordered with clam-shells, intersected it like moist red ribbons and in the beds between the old-fashioned flowers ran riot. There were rosy bleeding-hearts and great splendid crimson peonies; white, fragrant narcissi and thorny, sweet Scotch roses; pink and blue and white columbines and lilac-tinted Bouncing Bets; clumps of southern-wood and ribbon grass and mint; purple Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, and masses of sweet clover white with its delicate, fragrant, feathery sprays; scarlet lightning that shot its fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers; a garden it was where sunshine lingered and bees hummed, and winds, beguiled into loitering, purred and rustled.”
This story of girls and gardens is presented to the public in most attractive form by the publishers, who have spared no pains to make “Anne of Green Gables” a book to be desired. (L.C. Page and Company, Boston; William Briggs, Toronto.)
Notes
“It was encircled . . . purred and rustled.” This description of the garden at Orchard Slope appears in chapter 12 of Anne of Green Gables, in which Anne and Diana meet for the first time (see AGG, 121).
Bibliography
“Anne of Green Gables.” In The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 3: A Legacy in Review, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre, 51–68. University of Toronto Press, 2015.
Montgomery, L.M. Anne of Green Gables. L.C. Page and Company, 1908.
Image Credit
Photograph of L.M. Montgomery believed to have been taken in 1908 and appearing in this article, along with a caption that identifies her as “Miss L.M. Montgomery.” Courtesy of the L.M. Montgomery Collection, Archival and Special Collections, University of Guelph library.
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